A shadowy mindfulness app for contemplating chaos

24 Sep 2015

Ian Cheng Digital Commission

In the Serpentine Galleries' second Digital Commission artist Ian Cheng invites you to enter the world of Bad Corgi: a shadowy mindfulness app for contemplating chaos.

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The Serpentine has launched its second Digital Commission, a mindfulness app for iOS in which you assume precarious control of Bad Corgi, a dwarfish demon pup tasked with benignly herding sheep and avoiding distraction in a world of chaos.

Available to download now from the Serpentine’s website and iTunes store, Bad Corgi is set in an interactive simulation where players experiment with opportunities to pollute the herd, lose points and experience loss of control over their canine protagonist. Bad Corgi reflects on the human mind’s mercurial states of focus, distraction, discipline and uncanny ability to become possessed by an inner impulsive autopilot.

Bad Corgi is a new app by New York-based artist Ian Cheng whose influences draw on an education in Cognitive Science, a stint at George Lucas’s special effects company Industrial Light & Magic and a fascination with the dynamics of unpredictable systems. Using algorithmic modelling techniques commonly employed in the gaming industry, Cheng creates simulations in which virtual objects and characters are programmed with basic behaviours and then unleashed upon each other.

Cheng says

“I see my simulations as a kind of neurological gym in which art becomes a means to deliberately exercise the feelings of confusion, anxiety and cognitive dissonance that can accompany life in a world of intense change and uncertainty. In this way Bad Corgi functions as a shadowy mindfulness tool about refusing to eradicate stress and anxiety, and instead learning to deliberately setup and collaborate with those bad-feeling feelings.”

In the little world of Bad Corgi, the player is subjected to various stress conditions in which control of Bad Corgi is quite literally seized by other forces, leaving the player to accept misbehaviours on the part of Corgi and the app itself.

Serpentine Digital Commission

The Serpentine Digital Commission is a programme that develops new digital works through a variety of emerging mediums, hosted on the Serpentine’s website, transforming the site into a new forward thinking space for exhibiting art. Each commission aims to expand how we understand the effect of digital technologies on artistic and cultural practice today.

The Rolls-Royce Art Programme

Created using the world’s finest materials at the hands of master craftsmen and women, Rolls-Royce motor cars transcend their primary means as a form of conveyance to become works of art themselves. The Rolls-Royce Art Programme formally acknowledges the super-luxury car manufacturer’s shared ethos with the world of art, which has been an integral to the brand since its inception.

The programme comprises in-situ commissions, partnerships with leading arts organisations, a series of art talks featuring emerging and established artists and private art tours and drives. The Programme seeks to foster creativity and to enable artists to explore new areas of their practice. During 2015, Rolls-Royce has focussed on digital art, producing in-situ projects by artists from around the world including Isaac Julien, Morgan Wong, Ana-Maria Tavares, Carlos Rolón and Manal Al Dowayan. Previous collaborators have included Erwin Wurm, Angela Bulloch, Michael Zavros, Ugo Rondinone, Regina Silveira, Will Cotton, John Armleder, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Reza Derakshani, Tomás Saraceno and Karl Lagerfeld. For further information, please visit www.rolls-royce-art.com.

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Artist

Ian Cheng

Ian Cheng (b. 1984, Los Angeles) is a New York-based artist whose work utilises computer simulation as a way to understand and relate to continual change. Cheng has been the subject of solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York (2017); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2017); Migros Museum, Zurich (2016); Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2015); Triennale di Milano (2014); among others. His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen (2017); Yokohama Triennale (2017); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. (2016); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016); Taipei Biennial (2014); 12th Biennale de Lyon (2013); and Sculpture Center (2012). Cheng holds an MFA from Columbia University (2009) and a dual BA in Cognitive Science and Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley (2006).

Related Events / Exhibitions

AGNES

6 Feb 2014

AGNES is a digital commission by Cécile B. Evans, the first in a series of digital commissions that coincided with the launch of the new Serpentine website and the opening of the Serpentine Sackler Gallery.